Duil Name Days
Name Days mark the day someone was given a name, and are celebrated annually in Duilintinn. Significance of Names Duilintinn celebrates one's Name Day instead of their birthday for a few cultural reasons. Childbirth is very dangerous, and most parents won’t name a baby until they are expected to survive their first few weeks of life. Those days of uncertainty don’t count towards the child’s age any more than the months of pregnancy and labor do in the real world. When the family knew that the child would live and are here to stay, they're given a name. Once again, this ties into Duilintinn's cultural focus on helping people to find their place in the world; surviving childbirth would be the first step towards that. For a baby to die in childbirth or soon afterward is considered the worst tragedy imaginable. Ideally, everyone above the age of one has had the opportunity to experience love, gentleness, family, and a home… but newborns who die in childbirth never will. It’s super sad… the parents don’t even have a name to remember the child by. Unfortunately, that’s just life, and encouraging families to forget these small losses is almost a kindness. In a kingdom where finding one’s comfort place in the world is such a highly emphasized goal and quest, to remember and mourn a child who never got that would be absolutely soul-crushing. For this reason, children aren't named until they're likely to survive the initial danger period after childbirth, and that Name Day is celebrated from year to year instead of a birthday. History Name day celebrations have been a thing since the Feadhainn Era. However, the significance was different. In Duilintinn, it's about the symbolic moment the baby was welcomed into its first home, but in Feadhainn, it was about the symbolic moment the baby was given an identity, it's greatest strength and weakness. To them, a name was what made a baby human. This particular belief is still somewhat prevalent in Duilintinn, though not in such a blunt way. No one says they believe it, but the cultural undercurrent of belief/superstition is still there. The Feadhainn belief that a baby isn't human until it got a name is one of the reasons why babies aren't named until they're certain it will live. If you don't think of the child as a true being with an identity until it's named, then it's easier to move on from the death of an unnamed child. Celebration Name Day celebrations are pretty similar to birthday celebrations in the real world. In other words, they all involve gifts and yummy food, but other than that, they are incredibly varied. Here, a birthday party can involve anything from laser tag to tea parties. In Duilintinn, you’ll find kids celebrating their Name Days with mock battles carefully prepared by family members weeks in advance, outings to the local town, city, beach, or mountains, a horseback ride with friends, or anything they want, really (within reason). For adults, Name Day celebrations are celebrated according to preference. Some people like parties, some just want a quiet family dinner, others might enjoy an outing, while others still might not want any fuss at all. In addition, celebrations can vary from house to house. However, this is more due to the regional/cultural difference in opportunities for certain types of events than to a difference in cultural attitude towards name-day celebrations. At the end of the day, a Name Day celebrates the day that you decided that the world was somewhere you wanted to stick around and find your place in, and you can celebrate that choice in whatever way that you want. Changing Name Days There are a few situations where one might change their Name Day. Name Days are more a celebration of being welcomed into a FAMILY (your first happy comfort place) and refer more to the surname than the first name. Changing your first name wouldn't call for a change in your Name Day. However, people who do change their name (especially trans folks) might have a second name day celebration in the year, much like how a "Gotcha Day" is celebrated by adopted kids irl*. The only reason you would change your Name Day is if you changed your last name. This act is considered to be either the ultimate act of dedication and commitment (to add someone else's surname to your own) or alternatively the ultimate act of cutting ties with someone, usually after a family fallout or divorce. In the case of adding someone's last name to your own, this has its own small celebration as well, usually in conjunction with a wedding anniversary. There are cases of platonic name-adding as well, which have similar small celebrations to remember the date by. These are usually very understated celebrations just between the people in question. There are also found-family cases of name changes/additions. In the case of adoption, where the child either gets a new last name or adds on to their own, it's celebrated like a Gotcha Day. However, there are also people who choose to abandon their family name and take a different last name, often inspired by someone far closer to them. Lord Marvin is the best example of this. In a Harry-Potter-Weasley-Family situation, they may even take the last name of another family that they feel closer too. This erasure of your old surname and creation of a new one does change your Name Day, since this act makes it clear that the family you were born into was not, in fact, the place of comfort and identity it was meant to be. *A Gotcha Day is the day an adopted child came to their forever home for the first time. My brother is adopted, so we celebrate his in mid-April with a traditional Korean dinner, looking at old pictures from when he arrived, sharing stories about the adoption process, and generally just recognizing the day he came home. No cake or presents or anything. Then we celebrate his actual birthday as normal later in the year. However, families that only have adoptees might treat a Gotcha Day as a second birthday. It's kinda like Mother's Day or Father's Day. You do something to recognize it, but the celebration doesn't dominate the whole day and/or days before or after